klimt

Sotheby's and Christie's Show that Art Market Comeback Is Real

The art market's biggest question turned out to have a $200 million answer at Sotheby's on Wednesday night. Led by Alberto Giacometti's "L'Homme Qui Marche I," which an anonymous bidder picked up for more than $104 million, the auction house realized a total take of $235.7 million on 31 sold lots. Nobody expected this outcome, not even the most optimistic art market spectators, let alone a committed pessimist like me. Of course, my first instinct is to suggest that we wait for the contemporary art sales next week, but it's hard to deny that this week's outcome is both promising and exciting.

The Giacometti set a new record for the artist, sailing past the $27.5 million picked up by "Grand femme debout II" at a Christie's sale in May 2008. In driving nearly half the auction's sales, this piece made it clear that the art market comeback is more than the wishful thinking of collectors who have spent more than a year and a half watching their pieces lose value. A year from now, we'll be looking at "Homme" as the symbol of the art market's recovery, much as we've come to see that final $85 million Francis Bacon sale in May 2008 as the peak before the decline.

Eight lots failed to sell at the Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern evening sale, but this hardly matters when considered against the auction's overall performance. Presale expectations were beat by more than 100 percent, thanks in large part to the fact that 17 of the lots sold for more than £1 million each. Three lots crossed the £10 million threshold. Works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Klimt and Camille Pissarro easily pushed into seven-figure territory.

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Eight Schiele Drawings To Be Sold at Christie's

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

How do you pay for a $135 million painting? Perhaps by selling off a few of your other treasures. On February 4, Christie's London will offer eight works on paper by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. The proceeds from the paintings, which have a low estimate of $14.9 million, will go to the Neue Galerie, New York, which was created by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and the late Serge Sabarsky to showcase early-20th-century German and Austrian art. The sales of the paintings will go toward Lauder's $135 million purchase of Gustav Klimt's ``Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The drawings are from the the Serge Sabarksy estate. A Bloomberg article quotes Richard Nagy, a London art dealer, who says that Lauder owns the world's largest private collection of German and Austrian modern art. The Neue Galerie also isn't hurting for Schieles; the deputy director of the Neue Galerie says that the gallery has more than 140 addition Schiele works on paper.

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Tags: art, auction, christies, drawings, egon schiele, klimt, lauder

Klimt On The Cheap

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Decor, Art

A $135 million painting is out of all but the richest budgets. But for less than $1,000 you can have a version of Gustav Klimt's Adele painting in your home. To promote its exhibition, "Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings from the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer", the Neue Galerie created banners featuring the 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer to hang along Fifth Avenue at 86th street. There are eight Klimt banners which measure an impressive 96" H x 35" W. They sell for $979 and will be available from Better Wall, a company we have covered before which specializes in selling display banners, as of next Thursday March 29.

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Tags: art, bettter wall, BettterWall, decor, klimt, museum banners

More Klimt Paintings For Auction

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

After her Klimt painting sold for a record price earlier this year, ninety year old Maria Altmann has decided to sell her remaining four paintings by the same artist. All five were returned to her after having been confiscated from her family by Nazis in 1938. The four paintings have a combined value of somewhere from $100-$150 million, according to Christie's auctioneers, and include ~~"The Kiss,"~~ "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" - a portrait of Altmann's aunt and, it is speculated, the artist's long-time lover - "Houses in Unterachon Lake Atter" (pictured), "Apple Tree I" and "Birch Forest." All five of the paintings are currently on display at the Neue Gallerie in New York and will remain there until at least September 18th.

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Tags: altmann, art, artist, klimt, lake, neue gallery, record painting

Klimt Painting Sets Record

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Eclipsing the record set in 2004 by a Pablo Picasso painting, Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I has sold for $135 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting. It was purchased by billionaire Ronald S. Lauder, the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, and it will be displayed in his small, New York museum, the Neue Galerie. The painting was taken from the Bloch-Bauer's home in 1938 by Nazis and was sold by her niece, Maria Altmann, who has only had it since the beginning of this year, after looted artwork was returned to relatives of the original owners.